This book reevaluates modern scholarly approaches to ancient Jewish cultic rituals, arguing that sacrifice in particular has been long misunderstood. Various religious and cultural ideologies ...
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This book reevaluates modern scholarly approaches to ancient Jewish cultic rituals, arguing that sacrifice in particular has been long misunderstood. Various religious and cultural ideologies (especially supersessionist ones) have frequently prevented scholars from seeing the Jerusalem temple as a powerful source of meaning and symbolism to those ancient Jews who worshiped there. Such approaches are exposed and countered by reviewing the theoretical literature on sacrifice and taking a fresh look at a broad range of evidence concerning ancient Jewish attitudes toward the temple and its sacrificial cult. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, this work argues for a symbolic understanding of a broad range of cultic practices, including both purity rituals and sacrificial acts. The prophetic literature is also reexamined, with an eye toward clarifying the relationship between the prophets and the sacrificial cult. Later ancient Jewish symbolic understandings of the cult are also revealed in sources including Josephus, Philo, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, and Rabbinic literature. A number of ancient Jews certainly did believe that the temple was temporarily tainted or defiled in some fashion, including the Dead Sea sectarians and Jesus. But they continued to speak of the temple in metaphorical terms, and — like practically all ancient Jews — believed in the cult, accepted its symbolic significance, and hoped for its ultimate efficacy.Less

Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple : Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism

Jonathan Klawans

Published in print: 2005-11-24

This book reevaluates modern scholarly approaches to ancient Jewish cultic rituals, arguing that sacrifice in particular has been long misunderstood. Various religious and cultural ideologies (especially supersessionist ones) have frequently prevented scholars from seeing the Jerusalem temple as a powerful source of meaning and symbolism to those ancient Jews who worshiped there. Such approaches are exposed and countered by reviewing the theoretical literature on sacrifice and taking a fresh look at a broad range of evidence concerning ancient Jewish attitudes toward the temple and its sacrificial cult. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, this work argues for a symbolic understanding of a broad range of cultic practices, including both purity rituals and sacrificial acts. The prophetic literature is also reexamined, with an eye toward clarifying the relationship between the prophets and the sacrificial cult. Later ancient Jewish symbolic understandings of the cult are also revealed in sources including Josephus, Philo, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, and Rabbinic literature. A number of ancient Jews certainly did believe that the temple was temporarily tainted or defiled in some fashion, including the Dead Sea sectarians and Jesus. But they continued to speak of the temple in metaphorical terms, and — like practically all ancient Jews — believed in the cult, accepted its symbolic significance, and hoped for its ultimate efficacy.

Theologians have always struggled to understand how humanity and divinity coexisted in the person of Christ. Proponents of the Arian heresy, which held that Jesus could not have been fully divine, ...
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Theologians have always struggled to understand how humanity and divinity coexisted in the person of Christ. Proponents of the Arian heresy, which held that Jesus could not have been fully divine, found significant scriptural evidence of their position. The defenders of orthodoxy, such as Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome, and Augustine, believed that these biblical passages could be reconciled with Christ's divinity. Medieval theologians such as Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure, also grappled with these texts when confronting the rising threat of Arian heresy. They too faced the need to preserve Jesus' authentic humanity and to describe a mode of experiencing the passions that cast no doubt upon the perfect divinity of the Incarnate Word. However, they also confronted an additional obstacle. The medieval theologians had inherited from the Greek and Latin fathers a body of opinion on the passages in question, which by this time had achieved normative cultural status in the Christian tradition. However, the Greek and Latin fathers wrote in a polemical situation, responding to the threat to orthodoxy posed by the Arians. As a consequence, they sometimes found themselves driven to extreme and sometimes contradictory statements. These statements seemed to their medieval successors either to compromise the true divinity of Christ, his true humanity, or the possibility that the divine and human were in communication with or metaphysically linked to one another. As a result, medieval theologians also needed to demonstrate how two equally authoritative but apparently contradictory statements could be reconciled. This book examines the arguments that resulted from these dual pressures and finds that, under the guise of unchanging assimilation and transmission of a unanimous tradition, there were in fact many fissures and discontinuities between the two bodies of thought, ancient and medieval. Rather than organic change or development, the book finds radical change, trial, novelty, and even heterodoxy.Less

The Passions of Christ in High-Medieval Thought : An Essay on Christological Development

Kevin Madigan

Published in print: 2007-07-01

Theologians have always struggled to understand how humanity and divinity coexisted in the person of Christ. Proponents of the Arian heresy, which held that Jesus could not have been fully divine, found significant scriptural evidence of their position. The defenders of orthodoxy, such as Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome, and Augustine, believed that these biblical passages could be reconciled with Christ's divinity. Medieval theologians such as Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure, also grappled with these texts when confronting the rising threat of Arian heresy. They too faced the need to preserve Jesus' authentic humanity and to describe a mode of experiencing the passions that cast no doubt upon the perfect divinity of the Incarnate Word. However, they also confronted an additional obstacle. The medieval theologians had inherited from the Greek and Latin fathers a body of opinion on the passages in question, which by this time had achieved normative cultural status in the Christian tradition. However, the Greek and Latin fathers wrote in a polemical situation, responding to the threat to orthodoxy posed by the Arians. As a consequence, they sometimes found themselves driven to extreme and sometimes contradictory statements. These statements seemed to their medieval successors either to compromise the true divinity of Christ, his true humanity, or the possibility that the divine and human were in communication with or metaphysically linked to one another. As a result, medieval theologians also needed to demonstrate how two equally authoritative but apparently contradictory statements could be reconciled. This book examines the arguments that resulted from these dual pressures and finds that, under the guise of unchanging assimilation and transmission of a unanimous tradition, there were in fact many fissures and discontinuities between the two bodies of thought, ancient and medieval. Rather than organic change or development, the book finds radical change, trial, novelty, and even heterodoxy.

This book examines not only the dynasty of Jehu within the narrative of 2 Kings, but also the broader context of the dynasties of Israel and Judah in the books of Kings and Samuel. It discusses ...
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This book examines not only the dynasty of Jehu within the narrative of 2 Kings, but also the broader context of the dynasties of Israel and Judah in the books of Kings and Samuel. It discusses religious aspects of kingship (such as anointing, divine election, and prayer) in both the Old Testament and in the literature of the ancient Near East. The book concludes that the Deuteronomistic editor, because of a deep concern that leaders be divinely chosen and obedient to Yahweh, sought to subvert the monarchical status quo by shaping the Jehuite narrative to emphasize that dynastic succession disastrously fails to produce righteous leaders.Less

David T. Lamb

Published in print: 2007-12-01

This book examines not only the dynasty of Jehu within the narrative of 2 Kings, but also the broader context of the dynasties of Israel and Judah in the books of Kings and Samuel. It discusses religious aspects of kingship (such as anointing, divine election, and prayer) in both the Old Testament and in the literature of the ancient Near East. The book concludes that the Deuteronomistic editor, because of a deep concern that leaders be divinely chosen and obedient to Yahweh, sought to subvert the monarchical status quo by shaping the Jehuite narrative to emphasize that dynastic succession disastrously fails to produce righteous leaders.

No issue in scholarship on the ancient novel has been discussed as hotly as the origin of the Greek love novel, also known as the ‘ideal’ novel. The present book proposes a new solution to this old ...
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No issue in scholarship on the ancient novel has been discussed as hotly as the origin of the Greek love novel, also known as the ‘ideal’ novel. The present book proposes a new solution to this old problem. It argues that the genre had a personal inventor, Chariton of Aphrodisias, and that he wrote the first love novel, Narratives about Callirhoe, in the mid‐first century AD. This conclusion is drawn on the basis of two converging lines of argument, one from literary history, another from Chariton's poetics. A revisitation of the literary‐historical background provides the basis for further analysis: among other things, it considers Chariton's milieu at Aphrodisias (especially the local cult of Aphrodite), the dating of other early novels, and Chariton's potential authorship of the fragmentarily preserved novels Metiochus and Parthenope and Chione. Chariton's status as the inventor of the Greek love novel, suggested by the literary‐historical evidence, finds further support in his poetics. I argue that Narratives about Callirhoe is characterized by an unusual effort of self‐definition, which can be best explained as a consequence of coming to terms with a new form of writing. The book is rounded off by a study of the motif of Rumour in Chariton and its derivation from a surprising model, Virgil's Aeneid. This part also makes a significant contribution to the reception of Latin literature in the Greek world.Less

Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Love Novel

Stefan Tilg

Published in print: 2010-04-01

No issue in scholarship on the ancient novel has been discussed as hotly as the origin of the Greek love novel, also known as the ‘ideal’ novel. The present book proposes a new solution to this old problem. It argues that the genre had a personal inventor, Chariton of Aphrodisias, and that he wrote the first love novel, Narratives about Callirhoe, in the mid‐first century AD. This conclusion is drawn on the basis of two converging lines of argument, one from literary history, another from Chariton's poetics. A revisitation of the literary‐historical background provides the basis for further analysis: among other things, it considers Chariton's milieu at Aphrodisias (especially the local cult of Aphrodite), the dating of other early novels, and Chariton's potential authorship of the fragmentarily preserved novels Metiochus and Parthenope and Chione. Chariton's status as the inventor of the Greek love novel, suggested by the literary‐historical evidence, finds further support in his poetics. I argue that Narratives about Callirhoe is characterized by an unusual effort of self‐definition, which can be best explained as a consequence of coming to terms with a new form of writing. The book is rounded off by a study of the motif of Rumour in Chariton and its derivation from a surprising model, Virgil's Aeneid. This part also makes a significant contribution to the reception of Latin literature in the Greek world.

The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All is one of the major works from the golden age of Egyptian literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1980–1630 bc). The poem provides one of the most searching ...
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The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All is one of the major works from the golden age of Egyptian literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1980–1630 bc). The poem provides one of the most searching explorations of human motivation and divine justice to survive from ancient Egypt, and its stark pessimism questions many of the core ideologies that underpinned the Egyptian state and monarchy. It begins with a series of laments portraying an Egypt overwhelmed by chaos and destruction, and develops into an examination of why these disasters should happen, and who bears responsibility for them: the gods, the king, or humanity. This volume provides the first full literary analysis of this poem for a century. It provides a detailed study of questions such as: its date of composition; its historicity; the identity of its protagonists and setting; its reception history within Egyptian culture; and whether it really is a unified literary composition, or a redacted collection of texts of heterogenous origin.Less

A World Upturned : Commentary on and Analysis of The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All

Roland Enmarch

Published in print: 2009-01-22

The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All is one of the major works from the golden age of Egyptian literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1980–1630 bc). The poem provides one of the most searching explorations of human motivation and divine justice to survive from ancient Egypt, and its stark pessimism questions many of the core ideologies that underpinned the Egyptian state and monarchy. It begins with a series of laments portraying an Egypt overwhelmed by chaos and destruction, and develops into an examination of why these disasters should happen, and who bears responsibility for them: the gods, the king, or humanity. This volume provides the first full literary analysis of this poem for a century. It provides a detailed study of questions such as: its date of composition; its historicity; the identity of its protagonists and setting; its reception history within Egyptian culture; and whether it really is a unified literary composition, or a redacted collection of texts of heterogenous origin.

Gurinder Singh Mann

Published in print:

2001

Published Online:

November 2003

ISBN:

9780195130249

eISBN:

9780199834433

Item type:

book

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

DOI:

10.1093/0195130243.001.0001

Subject:

Religion, Sikhism

At present numbering twenty million adherents and spread the world over, the Sikhs represent a monotheistic tradition founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539) in the Punjab, a region that served as a ...
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At present numbering twenty million adherents and spread the world over, the Sikhs represent a monotheistic tradition founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539) in the Punjab, a region that served as a cultural bridge between the Middle East and South Asia. The Sikhs are fortunate to have in their possession a large number of early sacred manuscripts, including sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century protoscriptural texts. This unique context makes it possible for scholars to trace the history of Sikh canon formation with a degree of accuracy unimaginable in other major religious traditions. On the basis of a close examination of the extant manuscripts and other early Sikh sources in private custody of families in the Punjab, the author presents a detailed reconstruction of the making of the Adi Granth (“original book”) – the primary Sikh scripture, which comprises about 3,000 hymns. In the process, he traces its origin, expansion, canonization, and place within the institutional development of the Sikh community. His findings on many key issues differ from the traditional Sikh position, as well as from the hypotheses of other twentieth‐century scholars; they also raise some entirely fresh questions. The revised and expanded picture of the history of the text and institution of Sikh scripture will be of interest not only to scholars of Sikhism and Sikh religionists, but to scholars of comparative canon formation.Less

The Making of Sikh Scripture

Gurinder Singh Mann

Published in print: 2001-05-24

At present numbering twenty million adherents and spread the world over, the Sikhs represent a monotheistic tradition founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539) in the Punjab, a region that served as a cultural bridge between the Middle East and South Asia. The Sikhs are fortunate to have in their possession a large number of early sacred manuscripts, including sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century protoscriptural texts. This unique context makes it possible for scholars to trace the history of Sikh canon formation with a degree of accuracy unimaginable in other major religious traditions. On the basis of a close examination of the extant manuscripts and other early Sikh sources in private custody of families in the Punjab, the author presents a detailed reconstruction of the making of the Adi Granth (“original book”) – the primary Sikh scripture, which comprises about 3,000 hymns. In the process, he traces its origin, expansion, canonization, and place within the institutional development of the Sikh community. His findings on many key issues differ from the traditional Sikh position, as well as from the hypotheses of other twentieth‐century scholars; they also raise some entirely fresh questions. The revised and expanded picture of the history of the text and institution of Sikh scripture will be of interest not only to scholars of Sikhism and Sikh religionists, but to scholars of comparative canon formation.

This book develops an authentic and revolutionary musical analysis of ancient Greek poetry. It brings the interpretation of ancient verse into step with the sorts of analyses customarily enjoyed by ...
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This book develops an authentic and revolutionary musical analysis of ancient Greek poetry. It brings the interpretation of ancient verse into step with the sorts of analyses customarily enjoyed by works in all the more recent poetical and musical traditions. It departs from the abstract metrical analyses of the past in that it conceives the rhythmic and harmonic elements of poetry as integral to the whole expression, and decisive in the interpretation of its meaning. Such an analysis is now possible because of a new theory of the Greek tonic accent, set out in the third chapter, and its application to Greek poetry understood as choreia — the proper name for the art and work of ancient poets in both epic and lyric, described by Plato as a synthesis of dance rhythm and vocal harmony, in disagreement moving toward agreement. The book offers a thorough-going treatment of Homeric poetics: here some remarkable discoveries in the harmonic movement of epic verse, when combined with some neglected facts about the origin of the hexameter in a ‘dance of the Muses’, lead to essential new thinking about the genesis and the form of Homeric poetry. The book also gives a foretaste of the fruits to be harvested in lyric by a musical analysis, applying the new theory of the accent and considering concretely the role of dance in performance.Less

The Dance of the Muses : Choral Theory and Ancient Greek Poetics

A. P. David

Published in print: 2006-09-28

This book develops an authentic and revolutionary musical analysis of ancient Greek poetry. It brings the interpretation of ancient verse into step with the sorts of analyses customarily enjoyed by works in all the more recent poetical and musical traditions. It departs from the abstract metrical analyses of the past in that it conceives the rhythmic and harmonic elements of poetry as integral to the whole expression, and decisive in the interpretation of its meaning. Such an analysis is now possible because of a new theory of the Greek tonic accent, set out in the third chapter, and its application to Greek poetry understood as choreia — the proper name for the art and work of ancient poets in both epic and lyric, described by Plato as a synthesis of dance rhythm and vocal harmony, in disagreement moving toward agreement. The book offers a thorough-going treatment of Homeric poetics: here some remarkable discoveries in the harmonic movement of epic verse, when combined with some neglected facts about the origin of the hexameter in a ‘dance of the Muses’, lead to essential new thinking about the genesis and the form of Homeric poetry. The book also gives a foretaste of the fruits to be harvested in lyric by a musical analysis, applying the new theory of the accent and considering concretely the role of dance in performance.

The Mandaeans are a Gnostic sect that arose in the Middle East around the same time as Christianity. Although it is one of the few religious traditions that can legitimately claim a 2000‐year ...
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The Mandaeans are a Gnostic sect that arose in the Middle East around the same time as Christianity. Although it is one of the few religious traditions that can legitimately claim a 2000‐year literary history, there has been very little written about them in English. What little study of the religion there has been has focused on the ancient Mandaeans and their relationship to early Christianity. This book examines the lives and religion of contemporary Mandaeans, who live mainly in Iran and Iraq but also in diaspora communities throughout the world, including New York and San Diego (USA). The author seeks to cross the boundaries between the traditional history‐of‐religions study of the Mandaean religion (which ignores the existence of living Mandaeans) and the beliefs and practices of contemporary Mandaeans. She provides a comprehensive introduction to the religion, examining some of its central texts, mythological figures, and rituals, and looking at surviving Mandaean communities – showing how their ancient texts inform the living religion, and vice versa. The book is arranged in three parts: Beginnings; Rituals; and Native hermeneutics. A glossary and extensive endnotes are included.Less

The Mandaeans : Ancient Texts and Modern People

Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley

Published in print: 2002-11-28

The Mandaeans are a Gnostic sect that arose in the Middle East around the same time as Christianity. Although it is one of the few religious traditions that can legitimately claim a 2000‐year literary history, there has been very little written about them in English. What little study of the religion there has been has focused on the ancient Mandaeans and their relationship to early Christianity. This book examines the lives and religion of contemporary Mandaeans, who live mainly in Iran and Iraq but also in diaspora communities throughout the world, including New York and San Diego (USA). The author seeks to cross the boundaries between the traditional history‐of‐religions study of the Mandaean religion (which ignores the existence of living Mandaeans) and the beliefs and practices of contemporary Mandaeans. She provides a comprehensive introduction to the religion, examining some of its central texts, mythological figures, and rituals, and looking at surviving Mandaean communities – showing how their ancient texts inform the living religion, and vice versa. The book is arranged in three parts: Beginnings; Rituals; and Native hermeneutics. A glossary and extensive endnotes are included.

This book presents a commentary on and an analysis of P. Leiden I 344 recto, which contains the poem variously called The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All or The Admonitions (Mahnworte), from ...
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This book presents a commentary on and an analysis of P. Leiden I 344 recto, which contains the poem variously called The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All or The Admonitions (Mahnworte), from the Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt. The first part of the book comprises an analysis of several literary aspects of the poem, including its unity, compositional date, reception, possible setting, genre, literary style and meaning. It also offers a literary reading of the poem within the context of the cultural and intellectual milieu that produced it. The second part of the book provides a detailed translation, commentary to, and literary reading of, the poem, subdivided into sections that largely follow the divisions within the manuscript. A metrical transliteration is given, broadly following the prosodic principles of Gerhard Fecht, which provide a pragmatic formal mode of analysis. The degree to which these are relevant to the compositional structure of the poem is discussed.Less

Introduction

Roland Enmarch

Published in print: 2009-01-22

This book presents a commentary on and an analysis of P. Leiden I 344 recto, which contains the poem variously called The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All or The Admonitions (Mahnworte), from the Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt. The first part of the book comprises an analysis of several literary aspects of the poem, including its unity, compositional date, reception, possible setting, genre, literary style and meaning. It also offers a literary reading of the poem within the context of the cultural and intellectual milieu that produced it. The second part of the book provides a detailed translation, commentary to, and literary reading of, the poem, subdivided into sections that largely follow the divisions within the manuscript. A metrical transliteration is given, broadly following the prosodic principles of Gerhard Fecht, which provide a pragmatic formal mode of analysis. The degree to which these are relevant to the compositional structure of the poem is discussed.

The surviving body of ancient letters offers the reader a stunning variety of material, ranging from the everyday letters preserved among the Oxyrhynchus papyri to imperial rescripts, New Testament ...
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The surviving body of ancient letters offers the reader a stunning variety of material, ranging from the everyday letters preserved among the Oxyrhynchus papyri to imperial rescripts, New Testament Epistles, fictional or pseudepigraphical letters and a wealth of missives on almost every conceivable subject. They offer us a unique insight into ancient practices in the fields of politics, literature, philosophy, medicine, and many other areas. This collection presents a series of case studies in ancient letters, asking how each letter writer manipulates the epistolary tradition, why he chose the letter form over any other, and what effect the publication of volumes of collected letters might have had upon a reader's engagement with epistolary works. This volume brings together both well-established and new scholars currently working in the fields of ancient literature, history, philosophy, and medicine to engage in a shared debate about this most adaptable and ‘interdisciplinary’ of genres.Less

Ancient Letters : Classical and Late Antique Epistolography

Published in print: 2007-06-01

The surviving body of ancient letters offers the reader a stunning variety of material, ranging from the everyday letters preserved among the Oxyrhynchus papyri to imperial rescripts, New Testament Epistles, fictional or pseudepigraphical letters and a wealth of missives on almost every conceivable subject. They offer us a unique insight into ancient practices in the fields of politics, literature, philosophy, medicine, and many other areas. This collection presents a series of case studies in ancient letters, asking how each letter writer manipulates the epistolary tradition, why he chose the letter form over any other, and what effect the publication of volumes of collected letters might have had upon a reader's engagement with epistolary works. This volume brings together both well-established and new scholars currently working in the fields of ancient literature, history, philosophy, and medicine to engage in a shared debate about this most adaptable and ‘interdisciplinary’ of genres.

This book brings together two lines of enquiry in recent criticism: the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, and women as writers and readers in the 19th century. A classical education has been ...
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This book brings together two lines of enquiry in recent criticism: the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, and women as writers and readers in the 19th century. A classical education has been characterized as almost an exclusively male prerogative, but women writers had a greater imaginative engagement with classical literature than has previously been acknowledged. To offer a more accurate impression of the influence of the classics in Victorian women's literary culture, women's difficulties in gaining access to classical learning are explored through biographical and fictional representations of the development of women's education from solitary study at home to compulsory classics at university. The restrictions which applied to women's classical learning liberated them from the repressive and sometimes alienating effects of a traditional classical education, enabling women writers to produce distinctive literary responses to the classical tradition. Women readers focused on image, plot, and character rather than grammar, leading to imaginative and often subversive reworkings of classical texts. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot have been granted an exceptional status as 19th-century female classicists. This book places them in a literary tradition in which revising classical narratives in forms such as the novel and the dramatic monologue offered women the opportunity to express controversial ideas. The reworking of classical texts serves a variety of purposes: to validate women's claims to authorship, to demand access to education, to highlight feminist issues through the heroines of ancient tragedy, and to repudiate the warrior ethos of ancient epic.Less

Victorian Women Writers and the Classics : The Feminine of Homer

Isobel Hurst

Published in print: 2006-09-14

This book brings together two lines of enquiry in recent criticism: the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, and women as writers and readers in the 19th century. A classical education has been characterized as almost an exclusively male prerogative, but women writers had a greater imaginative engagement with classical literature than has previously been acknowledged. To offer a more accurate impression of the influence of the classics in Victorian women's literary culture, women's difficulties in gaining access to classical learning are explored through biographical and fictional representations of the development of women's education from solitary study at home to compulsory classics at university. The restrictions which applied to women's classical learning liberated them from the repressive and sometimes alienating effects of a traditional classical education, enabling women writers to produce distinctive literary responses to the classical tradition. Women readers focused on image, plot, and character rather than grammar, leading to imaginative and often subversive reworkings of classical texts. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot have been granted an exceptional status as 19th-century female classicists. This book places them in a literary tradition in which revising classical narratives in forms such as the novel and the dramatic monologue offered women the opportunity to express controversial ideas. The reworking of classical texts serves a variety of purposes: to validate women's claims to authorship, to demand access to education, to highlight feminist issues through the heroines of ancient tragedy, and to repudiate the warrior ethos of ancient epic.

For more than a century, scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity have assumed that ancient Jews viewed Gentiles as ritually impure, and that this alleged principle of Gentile ritual ...
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For more than a century, scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity have assumed that ancient Jews viewed Gentiles as ritually impure, and that this alleged principle of Gentile ritual impurity was the basis for a strict and burdensome policy of separation between Jews and non‐Jews. The present volume corrects decades of erroneous scholarship on the question of Gentile ritual impurity and the history of Jewish perceptions of Gentiles in antiquity. Although purity and impurity were intimately connected with questions of identity and otherness in ancient Jewish culture, the terms “pure” and “impure” were employed in various ways by different groups of Jews to describe and inscribe sociocultural boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. Close analysis of biblical, Second Temple, New Testament, patristic, and rabbinic sources, shows that at least four distinct modes of impurity were associated with Gentiles by different groups – ritual impurity, moral impurity, genealogical impurity, and carnal impurity. This unexpected diversity of ancient Jewish views of Gentile impurity is tied to widely differing definitions of Jewish group identity and the access of Gentiles to that identity. Consequently, ancient Jews exhibited widely varying attitudes towards intermarriage and conversion – the two processes by which group boundaries might be penetrated. These diverse views of the permeability of the Jewish–Gentile boundary through intermarriage or conversion, deriving in turn from diverse conceptions of Gentile impurity and Jewish identity, contributed to the rise of sectarianism in Second Temple Judaism, and to the separation of the early church from what would later become rabbinic Judaism.Less

Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities : Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud

Christine E. Hayes

Published in print: 2002-12-12

For more than a century, scholars of ancient Judaism and early Christianity have assumed that ancient Jews viewed Gentiles as ritually impure, and that this alleged principle of Gentile ritual impurity was the basis for a strict and burdensome policy of separation between Jews and non‐Jews. The present volume corrects decades of erroneous scholarship on the question of Gentile ritual impurity and the history of Jewish perceptions of Gentiles in antiquity. Although purity and impurity were intimately connected with questions of identity and otherness in ancient Jewish culture, the terms “pure” and “impure” were employed in various ways by different groups of Jews to describe and inscribe sociocultural boundaries between Jews and Gentiles. Close analysis of biblical, Second Temple, New Testament, patristic, and rabbinic sources, shows that at least four distinct modes of impurity were associated with Gentiles by different groups – ritual impurity, moral impurity, genealogical impurity, and carnal impurity. This unexpected diversity of ancient Jewish views of Gentile impurity is tied to widely differing definitions of Jewish group identity and the access of Gentiles to that identity. Consequently, ancient Jews exhibited widely varying attitudes towards intermarriage and conversion – the two processes by which group boundaries might be penetrated. These diverse views of the permeability of the Jewish–Gentile boundary through intermarriage or conversion, deriving in turn from diverse conceptions of Gentile impurity and Jewish identity, contributed to the rise of sectarianism in Second Temple Judaism, and to the separation of the early church from what would later become rabbinic Judaism.

The Great ‘First World’ and its companion text, The Lesser ‘First World’, are both examples of Mandaean priestly esoteric literature, and have been hardly studied since their ...
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The Great ‘First World’ and its companion text, The Lesser ‘First World’, are both examples of Mandaean priestly esoteric literature, and have been hardly studied since their publication in 1963. An odd figure appears in the scroll of the The Great ‘First World’, along with a number of other illustrations, but the identity of the figure depicted is not specified, although it is in the same style as other Mandaean Lightworld beings and priestly prototypes in illustrated documents. Drower, the translator, hazards no guess at its identity. The author gives her own translation of the text on the body, and suggests on the basis of various arguments that the enigmatic figure might be the priestly prototype Hibil Ziwa, but might also invite interpretation as the mystic sage Dinanukht; it might, in fact, intentionally invite both interpretations.Less

An Inscribed Mandaean Body

Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley

Published in print: 2002-11-28

The Great ‘First World’ and its companion text, The Lesser ‘First World’, are both examples of Mandaean priestly esoteric literature, and have been hardly studied since their publication in 1963. An odd figure appears in the scroll of the The Great ‘First World’, along with a number of other illustrations, but the identity of the figure depicted is not specified, although it is in the same style as other Mandaean Lightworld beings and priestly prototypes in illustrated documents. Drower, the translator, hazards no guess at its identity. The author gives her own translation of the text on the body, and suggests on the basis of various arguments that the enigmatic figure might be the priestly prototype Hibil Ziwa, but might also invite interpretation as the mystic sage Dinanukht; it might, in fact, intentionally invite both interpretations.

This introductory chapter begins with the story behind the delayed publication of the collection of essays presented in this volume. An overview of the essays is then given. It is argued that if the ...
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This introductory chapter begins with the story behind the delayed publication of the collection of essays presented in this volume. An overview of the essays is then given. It is argued that if the ultimate aim of the essays is to school the political intelligence of their readers, their method is scholarship of a detailed and rigorous kind. They are largely exercises in ‘source criticism’ (Quellenkritik) in its twin branches: study of the ancient evidence with a view to establishing who said what, and on what authority; and criticism of the data thus secured in the light of the observable political behaviour of human actors.Less

Editors' Introduction

DE STE CROIX

Published in print: 2004-03-25

This introductory chapter begins with the story behind the delayed publication of the collection of essays presented in this volume. An overview of the essays is then given. It is argued that if the ultimate aim of the essays is to school the political intelligence of their readers, their method is scholarship of a detailed and rigorous kind. They are largely exercises in ‘source criticism’ (Quellenkritik) in its twin branches: study of the ancient evidence with a view to establishing who said what, and on what authority; and criticism of the data thus secured in the light of the observable political behaviour of human actors.

This introductory chapter discusses the subject matter of this book, namely, word formation in Ancient Greek. The study will look at the morphological and semantic characteristics of the s-stem ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the subject matter of this book, namely, word formation in Ancient Greek. The study will look at the morphological and semantic characteristics of the s-stem formations. As a result of this investigation, a number of traditional views will be challenged. In particular, it will emerge that the conventional notion of ‘Caland's Law’ is inadequate, at least for Greek and quite possibly for the parent language as well. It is also shown that these morphological and semantic characteristics of the individual types and their historical development can be defined more closely.Less

PROLOGUE: THE STUDY OF A SUFFIX

Torsten Meissner

Published in print: 2006-04-06

This introductory chapter discusses the subject matter of this book, namely, word formation in Ancient Greek. The study will look at the morphological and semantic characteristics of the s-stem formations. As a result of this investigation, a number of traditional views will be challenged. In particular, it will emerge that the conventional notion of ‘Caland's Law’ is inadequate, at least for Greek and quite possibly for the parent language as well. It is also shown that these morphological and semantic characteristics of the individual types and their historical development can be defined more closely.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy provides, twice each year, a collection of the best current work in the field of ancient philosophy. Each volume features original essays that ...
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Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy provides, twice each year, a collection of the best current work in the field of ancient philosophy. Each volume features original essays that contribute to an understanding of a wide range of themes and problems in all periods of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from the beginnings to the threshold of the middle ages. From its first volume in 1983, OSAP has been a highly influential venue for work in the field, and has often featured essays of substantial length as well as critical essays on books of distinctive importance. Volume 43 includes two articles on Plato, five on Aristotle, two on important aspects of Stoicism and one on Plutarch and scepticism.Less

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Volume 43

Published in print: 2012-11-29

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy provides, twice each year, a collection of the best current work in the field of ancient philosophy. Each volume features original essays that contribute to an understanding of a wide range of themes and problems in all periods of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, from the beginnings to the threshold of the middle ages. From its first volume in 1983, OSAP has been a highly influential venue for work in the field, and has often featured essays of substantial length as well as critical essays on books of distinctive importance. Volume 43 includes two articles on Plato, five on Aristotle, two on important aspects of Stoicism and one on Plutarch and scepticism.

How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? This book is an exploration of how ancient Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, the book ...
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How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? This book is an exploration of how ancient Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, the book examines how sexuality and desire, the politics of culture, and the role of religion in society were considered and debated through the Victorian obsession with antiquity. Looking at Victorian art, it demonstrates how desire and sexuality, particularly anxieties about male desire, were represented and communicated through classical imagery. Probing into operas of the period, the book addresses ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and cultural politics. And through fiction—specifically nineteenth-century novels about the Roman Empire—it discusses religion and the fierce battles over the church as Christianity began to lose dominance over the progressive stance of Victorian science and investigation. Rediscovering some great forgotten works and reframing some more familiar ones, the book offers extraordinary insights into how the Victorian sense of antiquity and our sense of the Victorians came into being. With a wide range of examples and stories, it demonstrates how interest in the classical past shaped nineteenth-century self-expression, giving antiquity a unique place in Victorian culture.Less

Simon Goldhill

Published in print: 2011-08-07

How did the Victorians engage with the ancient world? This book is an exploration of how ancient Greece and Rome influenced Victorian culture. Through Victorian art, opera, and novels, the book examines how sexuality and desire, the politics of culture, and the role of religion in society were considered and debated through the Victorian obsession with antiquity. Looking at Victorian art, it demonstrates how desire and sexuality, particularly anxieties about male desire, were represented and communicated through classical imagery. Probing into operas of the period, the book addresses ideas of citizenship, nationalism, and cultural politics. And through fiction—specifically nineteenth-century novels about the Roman Empire—it discusses religion and the fierce battles over the church as Christianity began to lose dominance over the progressive stance of Victorian science and investigation. Rediscovering some great forgotten works and reframing some more familiar ones, the book offers extraordinary insights into how the Victorian sense of antiquity and our sense of the Victorians came into being. With a wide range of examples and stories, it demonstrates how interest in the classical past shaped nineteenth-century self-expression, giving antiquity a unique place in Victorian culture.

This book aims to provide a critical and analytical history of ancient Greek theories of the nature of pleasure and of its value and role in human life, from the earliest times down to the period of ...
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This book aims to provide a critical and analytical history of ancient Greek theories of the nature of pleasure and of its value and role in human life, from the earliest times down to the period of Epicurus and the early Stoics. While there have been many valuable studies of particular aspects of the topic, and several surveys of the treatment of pleasure by individual ancient writers (notably the monographs of Tenkku and Voigthinder on Plato, and Lieberg and Rieken on Aristotle), this is the first attempt at a comprehensive review of the contribution of the ancient Greeks to the theoretical understanding of pleasure. In view both of the central position which the major thinkers of the period accorded to the topic and of the inter-connectedness of many of their theories, the authors believe that the lack of such a study was a lacuna in the literature which they should attempt to fill.Less

The Greeks On Pleasure

J. C. B. GoslingC. C. W. Taylor

Published in print: 1982-12-02

This book aims to provide a critical and analytical history of ancient Greek theories of the nature of pleasure and of its value and role in human life, from the earliest times down to the period of Epicurus and the early Stoics. While there have been many valuable studies of particular aspects of the topic, and several surveys of the treatment of pleasure by individual ancient writers (notably the monographs of Tenkku and Voigthinder on Plato, and Lieberg and Rieken on Aristotle), this is the first attempt at a comprehensive review of the contribution of the ancient Greeks to the theoretical understanding of pleasure. In view both of the central position which the major thinkers of the period accorded to the topic and of the inter-connectedness of many of their theories, the authors believe that the lack of such a study was a lacuna in the literature which they should attempt to fill.

This book is a study of ancient logic based upon the John Locke lectures given in Oxford. Its six chapters discuss the following: firstly, certain ancient ideas about truth; secondly, the ...
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This book is a study of ancient logic based upon the John Locke lectures given in Oxford. Its six chapters discuss the following: firstly, certain ancient ideas about truth; secondly, the Aristotelian conception of predication; thirdly, various ideas about connectors which were developed by the ancient logicians and grammarians; fourthly, the notion of logical form, insofar as it may be discovered in the ancient texts; fifthly, the question of the ‘justification of deduction’; and sixthly, the attitude which has been called logical utilitarianism and which restricts the scope of logic to those forms of inference which are or might be useful for scientific proofs.Less

Truth, etc. : Six Lectures on Ancient Logic

Jonathan Barnes

Published in print: 2009-06-11

This book is a study of ancient logic based upon the John Locke lectures given in Oxford. Its six chapters discuss the following: firstly, certain ancient ideas about truth; secondly, the Aristotelian conception of predication; thirdly, various ideas about connectors which were developed by the ancient logicians and grammarians; fourthly, the notion of logical form, insofar as it may be discovered in the ancient texts; fifthly, the question of the ‘justification of deduction’; and sixthly, the attitude which has been called logical utilitarianism and which restricts the scope of logic to those forms of inference which are or might be useful for scientific proofs.

This book is a volume of original chapters on all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, published twice a year. The series aims to provide the best contemporary work in the field, covering ...
More

This book is a volume of original chapters on all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, published twice a year. The series aims to provide the best contemporary work in the field, covering all periods from the Presocratics to the philosophy of late antiquity.Less

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy : Volume 42

Published in print: 2012-07-19

This book is a volume of original chapters on all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, published twice a year. The series aims to provide the best contemporary work in the field, covering all periods from the Presocratics to the philosophy of late antiquity.